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Ratzinger blames the sex abuse by priests on the 1960’s sexual revolution

Not our fault!

In a recent letter commenting on clerical sex abuse, Ratzinger said that the cause of it was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s.

This is a stunning statement. Why? Because it is the mission and purpose of the Church to resist moral corruption, and especially to protect the clergy from it. The clergy should practice mortification of their sexual passions, devoted as they are — and canonically obliged — to celibacy and perfect chastity. One could just as easily say: “The monks are all fat because of the eating revolution.” Are they not supposed to practice mortification? It would be the equivalent of saying that the Titanic sank because there was an iceberg in front of it. The reality is that the Titanic sank because the crew was recklessly speeding at 22 knots (at that time very fast for an ocean liner) through “Iceberg Alley” in the springtime when icebergs are most commonly seen. The crew had also committed gross negligence in ignoring the warnings of ice by other ships.

It is amazing how the Novus Ordo clergy so blithely exonerate themselves of guilt in the matter of clerical abuse. What is yet more stupefying is what Ratzinger assigns as a concomitant cause: “At the same time, independently of this development, Catholic moral theology suffered a collapse that rendered the Church defenseless against these changes in society.”

Catholic moral theology suffered a collapse? Did that just happen on its own? No, says Ratzinger: “Until the Second Vatican Council, Catholic moral theology was largely founded on natural law, while Sacred Scripture was only cited for background or substantiation. In the Council’s struggle for a new understanding of Revelation, the natural law option was largely abandoned, and a moral theology based entirely on the Bible was demanded.”

The truth is that the “new theology,” of which Ratzinger was one of the principal architects and proponents during the 1950’s and 1960’s, demanded the abandonment of the traditional Catholic theology as found in the commonly used textbooks in seminaries. They detested the scholastic theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and called for its replacement with biblical and patristic (the Fathers of the Church) theology.

While this sounds beautiful and noble, it was merely a tool by the Modernists to soften and relativize Catholic theology. Why? There is nothing soft or relativistic about Sacred Scripture or the Fathers, but these sources do not constitute a coherent system of dogmatic or moral theology. The great contribution of Saint Thomas Aquinas and his school was to take Sacred Scripture and the Fathers, and to make from them a very clear synthesis and system. To abandon this work would be the equivalent of abandoning the wheel and returning to the time when people dragged things around.

What was the effect of this abandonment of scholastic theology? Ratzinger continues: “Consequently, there could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good, any more than anything fundamentally evil; (there could be) only relative value judgments. There no longer was the (absolute) good, but only the relatively better, contingent on the moment and on circumstances.”

The reader may recall that I assigned, in previous newsletters, as the cause of the abuse by priests exactly what Ratzinger here describes: the loss of any sense of moral absolutes.

Ratzinger makes other breathtaking statements:

Independently of this question, in many circles of moral theology the hypothesis was expounded that the Church does not and cannot have her own morality.

In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established, which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries.

One bishop, who had previously been seminary rector, had arranged for the seminarians to be shown pornographic films, allegedly with the intention of thus making them resistant to behavior contrary to the faith (1)

There were — not only in the United States of America — individual bishops who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole and sought to bring about a kind of new, modern “Catholicity” in their dioceses.

Having made these self-damning admissions, he attempts to excuse the Roman “authorities” by claiming that the complex criminal code of the 1983 (Novus Ordo) Code of Canon Law made it impossible to remove these priests who abused young persons. This is a positively ludicrous excuse. It is a shameless sham and an insult to any thinking and decent person. It would be the equivalent of saying, “Stalin was incapable of stopping the slaughter of millions of people because the laws on the books made it almost impossible for him to prosecute the perpetrators.” You might get away with this excuse in a republican form of government, where there is separation of powers, but you cannot seriously say this in the case of a monarchy or dictatorship. John Paul II — the “saint” — could have, with a single stroke of the pen, put a stop to any legal barriers. He could have defrocked priests and deposed bishops by means of a mere telegram or telephone call.

Ratzinger also offers the excuse that the Vatican bureaucracy was overwhelmed by the cases of abuse. This again is no excuse, since the accused could have been easily removed from priestly service while their case was being processed. In that way, the wicked practice of moving them around from parish to parish, where they abused again and again, could have been avoided.

Ratzinger asks the rhetorical question: “Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?” Ratzinger’s answer: “Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God.” The real reason: The godless, faithless, disgustingly selfish, and perverted Novus Ordo clergy who profited from the respect and admiration that innocent young persons had for the Catholic clergy in order to perform upon them acts which make you want to vomit.

Ratzinger offers a few other reasons for the clerical abuse. One of the factors is declining devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist: “The declining participation in the Sunday Eucharistic celebration shows how little we Christians of today still know about appreciating the greatness of the gift that consists in His Real Presence.” It was Ratzinger, however, who told us in an encyclical that Christ is in the bread,” which is a thoroughly Protestant notion of the Eucharist, denying the Real Presence of Christ. Ratzinger also stated: “To go to church on the ground that one can visit God who is present there is a senseless act which modern man rightfully rejects.” (2) And has the New Mass promoted devotion toward the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist?

The cherry on top of this burlesque of self-exoneration for the heinous crimes of the clergy is the final paragraph: “At the end of my reflections I would like to thank Pope Francis for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today. Thank you, Holy Father!”

It is not to be forgotten that the “Holy Father,” that heretical motor-mouth, is the one that has pronounced numerous heresies, and has justified receiving communion in the state of the mortal sin of adultery.

Vatican II

The real cause of the clerical abuse. Ratzinger said a few things which were true, but failed to assign the cause. Yes, there was a sexual revolution of the 1960’s, but was not the stated purpose of Vatican II to adapt the Church to fit the modern world? Did it not want to “open the windows of the Church,” as John XXIII said? The effect of this attitude produced in the clergy and the people an absorption of the very detestable sexual revolution which Ratzinger laments. If Vatican II had not happened, the Church would have resisted the sexual revolution. It was very successful in doing so in the 1950’s by means of the Legion of Decency, for example, which managed to control Hollywood’s penchant for sex. The Legion of Decency died after Vatican II, and so did decency in movies and in television.

Likewise the collapse of the Church’s moral theology was a direct result of Vatican II. Up to 1958, moral theology was in wonderful condition. Many moral theologians wrote treatises and textbooks in the early part of the twentieth century which were excellent, applying traditional moral principles to modern moral problems. One such example is the textbook of the Dominican Merkelbach, which we use here at the seminary. It is the most thorough moral theology textbook in my experience.

Ratzinger describes these horrors as if neither he nor his boss, “Saint” John Paul II, were responsible for them, and in any way participated in them. The reality is that Ratzinger is one of the most responsible for Vatican II as the radical, modernist, suit-and-tie theologian, together with his “buddies” Karl Rahner, the pantheist Jesuit with a mistress, and Hans Küng, the notorious denier of the divinity of Christ, Our Lady’s Assumption, and the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. They were the radical threesome. I remember. It was Küng who said “We got more from Vatican II than we ever expected.”

Ratzinger refuses to see Vatican II as the cause of the problems. The Council is his baby. It is evident to anyone with a brain that the Church went into a tail-spin in every aspect of its life since the opening of that wicked meeting of Vatican II, but Ratzinger insults every thinking and decent person with these preposterous and farcical “reasons” that he gives for clerical abuse, never once saying “mea culpa” for his criminal, lawless, disgraceful, and reprehensible cooperation in these vicious acts of a corrupt clergy.

Footnotes:

(1) This was “Ken,” the Novus Ordo Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan. (He always wanted to be known by his first name).